Freight Fraud Gets More Strategic Heading Into Peak Season

As the freight industry heads into its highest-volume stretch of the year, the cargo theft numbers tell a deceptively reassuring story. Reported incidents fell sharply in the second quarter of 2026, down roughly a quarter from the year before. But losses over that same period more than doubled, to $304.

6 million, with the average theft now running about $564,000. Industry estimates suggest only about 10% of incidents ever get reported at all. Those numbers tell a story about the state of the industry.

Ahead of his presentations at this year’s F3: Future of Freight Festival, we sat down with Aqil Naeem, co-founder and CEO of E3 Group, to hear his perspective on the situation. “There are fewer thefts, but each one costs a lot more,” Naeem said. The drop, he explained, is due to a shift in tactics as bad actors adjust to the industry’s defenses.

“Fictitious pickups barely moved while overall theft events fell,” Naeem said. “Criminals are stealing less often and choosing their loads more carefully.” The takeaway for brokers and shippers heading into Q4, he said, is that a quieter quarter on paper isn’t a safer quarter.

What’s driving the shift, according to Naeem, is how cheap and accessible the tools of impersonation have become. “A thief can order fake license plates or carrier decals and have them tomorrow, then stick a magnetic carrier name over the real one on the truck door,” Naeem said.

“They can buy a carrier’s email login on the dark web and send pickup instructions from the real inbox. They can generate a photo of a truck or a CDL with AI in seconds.” It’s a pattern E3 Group sees repeating across the industry: phishing campaigns and remote-access malware used to take over business emails and carrier accounts.

The transition from smash-and-grab theft to deception-based fraud is why E3 Group built its platform around verifying the person behind the wheel rather than just the paperwork behind the load. Naeem said the economics of organized freight crime have simply gotten too easy.

“The tools of organized crime have never been easier to get,” Naeem said of the shift toward strategic theft. “A fake CDL with barcodes that actually scan can be ordered online. A carrier’s email password can be bought on the dark web. A convincing photo of a truck or a document takes seconds with AI.”

Put together, he said, a fictitious pickup can be run from anywhere with a laptop. “It pays better than breaking into a trailer, and the thief never has to set foot in the yard,” he said. Naeem described impersonation as having matured into “systematic business,” with criminal groups taking over carrier email and compliance accounts.

In some cases, they simply buy real carrier companies outright. “The weak point has moved from the trailer lock to identity,” he said. “Most vetting still checks the carrier on paper and never checks the person who actually shows up for the freight.”

Verifying the driver, not just the paperwork That gap is exactly what E3 Driver Authentication, the company’s driver verification product, is designed to close. Naeem walked through how the process works in practice: “When a driver is assigned to a load, they get a text with a link. There’s no app to download.”

From there, he said, they take a few live photos: their CDL, the side of the truck, the cab card, and a selfie, and the system runs those inputs against more than 50 signals in seconds, returning what Naeem called “a clear go or no-go with the recorded proof behind it.” Through it all, the broker always makes the final call.

[Credit: E3 Group] Among the fraud patterns the platform has caught, Naeem pointed to magnetic decals stuck over a truck’s real carrier markings, AI-generated or edited CDL and truck images, and driver switch-outs between authentication and arrival.

The system also cross-references the barcode on the back of a CDL against the front of the card, controls the phone’s camera so nobody can upload a recycled photo (Naeem said the platform once flagged a CDL that had been photographed off a tablet screen), and checks VINs across the cab card, door-jamb sticker,and the broker’s own records, alongside location data pulled from cell tower, GPS and IP sources.

The timing matters as much as the checks themselves. “It happens hours before pickup, not at the dock,” Naeem said. “If something’s off, the broker or shipper has time to put a different carrier on the load before the truck ever shows up.”

E3’s answer to the newest wave of fraud tactics is a layered approach that can catch out AI voice cloning and spoofed motor carrier numbers. Caleb Sirak, the company’s co-founder and president, said the platform can distinguish human speech from generated audio, but added that the company doesn’t lean on phone verification in the first place.

“A cloned voice can get through a call,” Sirak said. “It can’t produce a live photo of a real CDL whose barcode matches its front, a face that matches that CDL, or a truck whose VINs match across three sou